SHE’S intelligent. She’s beautiful. And she’s contradiction personified.

Mrs Shabnam Melwani-Reis is as Indian as they come. Hailing from a Singaporean Sindhi family, she values family and calls her two sisters her “right hand and left hand”.

She looks Indian, draping a lehnga on her slim, dusky frame with natural style (look at the picture on Page 1 if you don’t believe me).

And she has even embraced the most Indian of habits: Joining the family business.

Yet, she’s about the most non-Indian Indian in her habits. She doesn’t speak fluent Hindi.

She doesn’t watch Bollywood movies, unless they feature her two friends Karishma and Kareena Kapoor.

And she doesn’t particularly fancy Indian food.

Fortunately, none of this bothers Mrs Melwani-Reis.

The director of Jay Gee Melwani Group is so secure in her own skin that she laughs as she discloses all this. After all, this is the woman who grew up with the nickname “terror”.

“I was always fighting for attention as a child,” says Mrs Melwani-Reis, who studied at Marymount Convent and Catholic Junior College before moving to Boston University for her degree in business.

“Growing up as the middle child in a three-child family, I was the devil among the sisters. While my sisters were proper-proper girls, playing the piano and taking dance lessons, I was a tomboy and always getting into trouble. That’s why my dad nicknamed me ‘terror’.”

That said, she has very fond memories of her late father – businessman Moti Melwani, who is best remembered as the man who brought Levi’s to Singapore.

“He was a very dynamic man who always found time for his family despite having a very demanding job,” says Mrs Melwani-Reis, who turned 40 this year.

“He was always there for us, and made sure we had a great family vacation every year. In fact, he was the one who taught me to swim, ride a cycle and play badminton.”

This has obviously influenced her role as a parent.

She and her husband Justin Reis – he is Australian and works in the financial industry – decided she would work from home so that she can spend more time with their seven-year-old son Zachary.

Despite her demanding job – she launched three new brands in Singapore just three months ago: New Look, which stocks fashionable clothes for women at affordable prices; Holland & Barrett, which deals in lifestyle products like organic food and health supplements; and T.M. Lewin which stocks corporate wear for men – she tries to ensure she is home when Zachary gets back from school in the afternoon.

“I’m the disciplinarian in the family, but Zach knows very well that he’s got me wrapped around his little finger,” admits Mrs Melwani-Reis, adding that little Zachary is a well-mannered boy who values every gift he gets and does not throw tantrums like his mother used to at his age.

If Zachary is the apple of her eye at home, the Giuseppe Zanotti Design outlets, which sell luxury footwear for women, occupy a similar slot in her professional life.

Mrs Melwani-Reis, who was director of communications for MTV Asia from 1995 to 2000 and set up digital music distribution company Soundbuzz (which was eventually bought by Motorola in 2008) before taking a more active role in the Jay Gee Melwani Group in 2003, is very proud of having linked up with the Italian footwear designer.

“I was shopping in Paris and had just bought a pair of Guiseppe Zanotti shoes when the man himself walked into the store.

The salesperson introduced us, and we immediately hit it off.

And when I told him I wanted to bring his brand to Singapore, he was all for it.”

That chance encounter led to the first Guiseppe Zanotti boutique being set up at Palais Renaissance.

Not only did it give the women of Singapore more choice in fashionable footwear, the outlet also won the prestigious Best New Entrant prize at the Singapore Retailer’s Association Awards last year.

Now, a second outlet lures fashionistas at the Ion.

It is perhaps fated that Mrs Melwani-Reis’ career interlocks seamlessly with fashion.

After all, this is the woman who has been on every “best dressed” and “most fashionable” list in Singapore for more than a decade now.

That said, she now admits freely that she is no longer concerned about being evaluated by the fashion police every time she steps out of her home.

While she still cuts a very elegant figure – a result of her father’s insistence that all of them be presentably attired when they went out – she is much more relaxed about what she wears and how she looks.

“I have now come to an age where I know the difference between complacency and contentment,” she says.

Now, that’s a terrific place to be.

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